


between the bars

by songs



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 21:11:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songs/pseuds/songs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...They chained your hands."</p>
            </blockquote>





	between the bars

“…They chained your hands.” Armin’s voice is bare, distant. Faraway, like something out of a dream.

Eren lets out something too wispy, too sad to be a laugh. “They need to, Armin. It’s dangerous.”

“You wouldn’t—” Armin swallows the crack in his tone, and tries again. “You wouldn’t hurt anyone. You’re not a Titan. You’re still  _human._ ”

“They don’t know that,” Eren says, easily, like he’s recited it a million times. Armin wonders if this is how he remains sane, in the time between his brief visits from him and Mikasa.

They keep him in a cage, and he has to cope. He needs reasons. And so, he makes them.

Armin blinks away the sudden wetness in his lashes. He won’t cry. He won’t break. He is not glass, he is concrete, so long as Eren needs him to be.

And then, Eren’s voice goes small: “… _I_ don’t know that.”

This sets Armin off. He doesn’t even think, which is something Armin  _does not do._ Armin always thinks. Armin is always calm. Armin not fists and teeth and blades but  _thought,_ Armin is  _thought._ But at the sound of those words, the defeat in Eren’s voice, Armin slams his fist against the bars, and the paleness in his eyes go wild with anger. _“Don’t_ say that. Don’t ever say that.”

“Armin.” Eren’s voice has no edge. It is chiding, like he’s speaking to a child who does not understand. “I don’t remember anything. I don’t know what happens when I become…” He struggles around the word. “…one of them.”

The anger, the sudden bite of rage—it all flickers into nothing inside of him at the sound of Eren’s words. Armin hears the whisper of fear, the desperation, and feels something in his soul ache.  _Oh, Eren,_ he wants to say.  _Oh, oh Eren._

But he remains silent. Instead, he unfists his palms—white and smooth and young—and slips then between the bars, reaching for Eren’s cuffed wrists.

The other boy looks up at him, eyes wide and  _green_ , so very green, like the earth Armin has only roamed in books and stories, like the world they promised to see together, like the lips of land around the ocean—the ocean  _they will find one day._ It is not a matter of if or maybe, only a matter of time.

Armin lifts Eren’s hands to his face, and then, instinctively, like a press of pulse, he brings them to his lips.

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that: two boys, a dark, prison-cell, and hands, and lips, and silence. A silence loud with all of the unsaid, all of the unspoken, all of it translated in the way Eren does not pull away, and the way Armin does not let go.


End file.
